Formed on Long Island in 1979, Stray Cats were a bit of an enigma: Punk-era kids emulating mid-’50s Rockabilly, the music made famous by Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins.  When disco was in full swing and stadium rock was the thing, the trio of Brian Setzer on lead guitar and vocals, “Slim Jim” Phantom on the skins, and Lee Rocker rocking a standup bass, were throwing back to a much different time in our modern history.

The band really broke open after a move to England, where the Punk scene was more accepting of such a unique Rockabilly/Punk hybrid. Repackaging themselves and finding a record label, the Cats came back to the U.S. in the early ’80s with hits such as “Rock This Town,” and “(She’s) Sexy and 17.” 

After a few successful albums and heavy rotation on MTV for several years, Setzer grew bored and disbanded the outfit.  Over the years the trio has gotten together again to record some new music, re-release the old hits, and tour on occasion.  Setzer has said that he regretted breaking up the band at the height of their fame, even though they all went on to successful side projects since the band’s dissolution.

Wednesday night saw the Stray Cats’ return to Northeast Ohio from a show that was rescheduled from last year due to a debilitating illness from which Setzer had been suffering.

Whatever neurological issues that sidelined the lead guitarist last year must be cured, as he and his bandmates were in fine form for the Northfield Park Racino show. Attendees were dressed in their finest Teddy Boy duds, anticipating the first time that the full band has played Northeast Ohio.  In the trio’s heyday they played Blossom once; the Cleveland area wasn’t a stop they made on any tour of theirs, despite the 216’s popularity during the 170s and ’80s.

What’s not to like about a Stray Cats concert?  Their music is non-political, and any sexual innuendo is squarely set in the innocence of the McCarthy-era lyrics. Each tune is a toe-tapper of the sing-along variety, awash in a gentle sea of nostalgia.  Which here is double: a late-1970s-era trio harking back to the early days of Rock-n-Roll.

The only drawback, sadly, was the length of the show: it barely rang in at ninety minutes and, whether that’s due to the shorter nature of older rock tunes, the crowd was clearly clamoring for more.  

The band offered a twenty-two song set, giving the audience everything they could ask for, including an early-set “Runaway Boys,” a mid-set “Stray Cat Strut,” and of course, “Rock This Town” towards the end of the night.  Noticeably absent, and for cause, was one of their biggest hits, “(She’s) Sexy and 17,” which doesn’t play too well in a post-Epstein world.

They closed the night out with a mashup of Rockabilly classics “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog,” and then wrapped it up with “Built For Speed,” which as Setzer and company are approaching their late 60s, is an apt metaphor for this still-going-hard group of musicians.

The post Concert Photos: Stray Cats in Fine Form at Northfield Park Racino appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Touring in support of her latest LP Creature of Habit, Courtney Barnett tour through 90 minues at the Agora with Zoh Amba opening. Here’s all the action we caught.

The post Concert Photos: Courtney Barnett Rocks the Agora appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Never mind the musicianship. The Sex Pistols inspired numerous up-and-coming musicians who had yet to develop their musical chops, making them think that they too could become superstars if they only got onto stage and expressed themselves. That theory pans out when it comes to Joy Division. Famously, Peter Hook, Ian Curtis and Bernard Sumner — the core of what would become the post-punk band Joy Division — saw the Pistols play in Manchester, England in 1976 and decided to form a band with drummer Stephen Morris in the wake of that experience.

Joy Division would release two seminal studio albums before Curtis committed suicide just as the band was to embark on its first-ever U.S. tour. Hook, Morris and Sumner soldiered on as New Order and had great success throughout the ’80s and ’90s. That band has since splintered. Sumner retains the name New Order, but Hook continues to play Joy Division and New Order tunes with his band the Light. Earlier this year, the Rock Hall announced that both Joy Division and New Order will finally be inducted in November as part of the Class of 2026. The two groups have been eligible for induction for several years now.

In advance of that induction, Hook and the Light will hit the road for a U.S. tour that finds them playing the 2001 New Order album Get Ready in its entirety. Hook first revisited the Joy Division album Unknown Pleasures back in May 2010 for a commemorative charity concert and has followed it each year by performing subsequent albums from Joy Division and New Order.

Hook says he’s happy the wait to be inducted is finally over.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t care [about getting inducted]. There’s not much we can do about it apart from promote it when you do get nominated,” he says via Zoom from his home in Alderley Edge, just outside of Manchester, England. Hook and the Light perform at 7 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 23, at the Agora. He also gives a talk at 2 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 24, at the Rock Hall. “We were up three times. The first time, me and the other [members of New Order] promoted it. The second time, I promoted it, and they promoted it a little. The third time, they didn’t promote it at all. The fans did it anyway. There you go. It’s quite interesting. They thought we deserved it.”

Since Hook and his former bandmates have had a falling out, it is unclear who will attend the upcoming induction ceremony and who might perform.

“The whole thing of that is completely up in the air,” says Hook. “Obviously, I would prefer to take the Light with me and do what we do. At the moment, I have nothing to report. If I do go, I might be looking like [Silence of the Lambs’ villain] Hannibal Lecter with the straightjacket and the mouthpiece. They’ll be wheeling me out like that, so I can keep control.”

The Joy Division story is a remarkable one. Shortly after forming, the group released its full-length debut, 1979’s Unknown Pleasures, for the newly formed Factory Records. Curtis’s bellowing vocals and Hook’s thick bass riffs distinguished the group from other bands at the time. Hook says only Curtis knew the group was onto something special.

“The only person that felt that and expressed that [the music was groundbreaking] was Ian Curtis,” he says. “If we ever got down because we didn’t get gigs or were having trouble getting signed, he would always say, ‘Don’t worry. One day, we will be known all around the world.’ That was his speech to keep us going. He really was a fantastic cheerleader. Sadly, you couldn’t do [cheerleading] for him. He hid his disability so well that the only time you would spot it is when we had a [epileptic] fit. When he came around, he was back to being Ian. He would tell you he was fine. We were 22. We didn’t know our ass from our elbow. I’ve lost a few friends to suicide. Luckily for me, so far, it’s been something I can’t comprehend. You hope some people have found some peace and maybe can rest. It’s the only thing you can hope for.”

Hook says that revisiting Get Ready has been instructive. Looking back, he recalls that he and now-estranged guitarist Bernard Sumner were in a good place as they developed the “rockier” side of New Order’s sound.

“It was the comeback album when Barney [Sumner] and I rediscovered our friendship,” says Hook. “He had done Electronic. I had done Revenge and Monaco. It was his idea. He approached us. He felt like we had unfinished business. It was like going back to an old girlfriend. We did it, and it enabled us to play together on Get Ready like when we formed the band. For six months, it was just me and him. It was a special time. It was a moment for us to actually discover what we loved about each other’s playing. I loved the way he played guitar, and he loved the way I loved bass. On [New Order albums] Republic and Technique, we were fighting all the time. This was really refreshing and nice. Barney was full of hope for the future. I had not seen that in a long time. During the sessions, he kept saying, ‘This shit is great. I can’t wait to play it live.’”

The group invited Smashing Pumpkins singer-guitarist Billy Corgan to play on the album, and he had added rock appeal to the tunes as well.

“When we finished, and it came time to do that tour, [Sumner] didn’t want to play,” says Hook. “It’s like being mugged in an alley. I thought it would go back to what it was before, and lo and behold, it was back to how it was before. The next album, [2005’s] Waiting for the Sirens’ Call was a trial, and [2013’s] Lost Sirens was a waste of time. We just couldn’t stand each other.”

Conversely, Hook says playing with the Light has been great. He says he’s now worked longer with the Light guitarist David Potts than he did with Sumner.

“They show amazing respect for the music,” he says of his backing musicians. “They really do. They each have their own lives outside of it. It is a vehicle for me to play Joy Division and New Order songs and give the New Order and Joy Division fans what they want, and it is an absolute pleasure compared to the pain and the awful feelings I used to have when I toured with New Order. They’ve made it out like it was me. They act like, ‘We’re happy as New Order now that he’s gone.’ I know how Caesar felt, let’s put it that way. It is a breath of fresh air. I was very disheartened when [Sumner] took the trademark and then could masquerade as New Order.”

And now that Sumner is the only original member of New Order leading the group, Hook says the band doesn’t accurately represent the group’s innovation synth-rock sound.

“The fans have stuck with them, and they should thank their lucky stars for that,” he says. “But it’s going to come around and bite you in the ass when your fans vote you into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and you can’t even go. You can’t even have the grace to go and be inducted.”

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post Joy Division/New Order’s Peter Hook Credits Loyal Fans for Rock Hall Induction appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Some songs belong to the year in which they were recorded. Others resist musical carbon dating.

“The Animal Speaks” is one of those songs.

Fifty years ago, 15-60-75—better known as The Numbers Band—released the song on its debut album, Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town. Led by Robert Kidney alongside his brother Jack, the long-running Northeast Ohio group had recorded the live album the previous year at Cleveland’s Agora, where it opened for Bob Marley and the Wailers (and used the Wailers’ mobile recording unit, gratis). It captured a seasoned band working in an odd musical language of its own, far outside the machinery of the 1970s record business.

The album slowly acquired a cult following. Then a remastered and expanded two-LP edition, released in 2013, introduced it to another generation. David Fricke of Rolling Stone heard “blues and chaos, raw power and the true price of independent rock & roll spirit.” Writing in The Guardian, Tom Hughes called the reissue a “thundering, juddering marvel,” while Greil Marcus long described the Kidney brothers’ music as a “radical, visionary and living force.”

Kidney’s fellow musicians speak of him with similar admiration. Chris Butler, later of Tin Huey and the Waitresses, played bass with the Numbers Band in the 1970s. He regards Kidney’s achievement as civic as well as musical.

“Bob was able to play original music five nights a week, three one-hour sets, build an audience, and pay his musicians something close to a living wage. That is unheard of,” says Butler. “He gets to be an artist and we get to eat – it gets no better than that.”

Kidney, now 79, has an old-school noir character-actor gravity, a heavy brow, a set jaw, and a stillness that commands the room.

Of all the songs on Jimmy Bell’s Still in Town, “The Animal Speaks” has had the strangest afterlife. Its energy and jagged attack might now be filed under post-punk, though it predates the category. In the decades that followed, it was sung by John Lydon as well as Cream’s Jack Bruce, placed in a scene in a film about Jeffrey Dahmer, and heard by listeners far removed from the Northeast Ohio clubs where it began.

None of this was imaginable to Kidney when he wrote it.

“I wanted to do something original,” he said. “I wanted it to be unique, and I worked hard, to the best of my ability and knowledge, to write all the songs on Jimmy Bell in that sense.”

A Band Outside the System

The Numbers Band emerged when Northeast Ohio was producing an improbable concentration of groups that seemed unable—or unwilling—to make themselves easy to explain.

Devo came from Akron. Pere Ubu, Dead Boys, the electric eels, and X_X came from Cleveland. Tin Huey and the Waitresses developed in the same orbit as did Chrissey Hynde, the Bizarros, Chi Pig, Rubber City Rebels, and others of the era. Eventually, these groups and others were gathered under the loose designation of the “Akron sound,” a category elastic enough to encompass several cities and almost as many musical traditions.

The region’s eccentricity was underwritten by an industrial work ethic.

“With Bob, it was almost like a factory job,” says Butler. “You rehearsed two or three times a week and then played three hours a night.”

Kidney said the band, today, is treated with a degree of reverence, partly because it survived. But at the beginning, things were less congenial.

“Back then, we were pariahs,” he said, repeating the word for emphasis.

Most of the groups around them played covers. Those that wrote original material tended to shape it toward radio tastes. Kidney had little interest but understood what his fans came for. 

“They were listening to the primal force of the music,” Kidney said. “It didn’t matter what the song was. What mattered was that we were going to cross over into where the primal source of humanity was being tapped to make energy.”

For a time, Kidney had reason to believe the Numbers Band might break beyond the region. The group had developed a large local following, and WMMS was earning a reputation for championing boundary-pushing acts such as David Bowie, Rush, Roxy Music, and Lou Reed. When the opportunity to make an album arrived, Kidney hoped the station—and the city—would rally behind his band.

It did not.

“When it came out, WMMS wanted nothing to do with it,” he said. “Nobody in Cleveland wanted it. That’s when I realized I was more like Thelonious Monk than Bob Dylan.”

Butler put it like this: “They were too esoteric. There was no station hip enough to play that at the time.”

Turn the Beat Around

“The Animal Speaks” began with a rhythmic inversion.

Speaking by phone from Tallmadge, Ohio, where he lives with his wife, Janet, Kidney explained that he took rock and roll’s foundational rhythm—Chuck Berry—and reversed its emphasis. The familiar pattern accented the second and fourth beats. Kidney shifted it to the first and third.

Butler remembered the effect as a physical force—an inverted rhythm that shouldn’t work on paper but drove the room anyway.

“It’s backwards,” Butler says. “It’s anapestic. It’s a heartbeat turned around. If you analyze it musically, it ought to make you stumble. But instead, you start moving.”

Meanwhile, the lyrics emerged from the world Kidney knew, a crowded club, a charged local audience, and the nocturnal existence of a musician playing most nights of the week.

The opening line of the song, “Out across night’s sky lights down through the doorway, wide-eyed blues alive,” describes Kidney entering the Kove, a basement club on North Water Street that had become a center of Kent, Ohio’s live music scene. He is descending the stairs, taking in the room, and preparing to perform. But the phrase struck him as incomplete.

“After writing that line, I thought, how much more do I want to reveal? I said to myself, I should say the truth,” says Kidney.

The song begins in appetite—for music, sex, women, and the raw self that Kidney inhabits onstage—but the swagger gradually gives way to vulnerability as the narrator reckons with loving a woman who may never trust him. She becomes the dawn, finding him as he emerges from the darkness of the club. It is a striking and raw vision of redemption and rebirth that mirrors the song’s own trajectory across fifty years.

Johnny Rotten Picks Up the Animal

Nearly a decade after the album’s release, “The Animal Speaks” entered another room—this one occupied by some of the era’s most adventurous musicians.

The Golden Palominos were a collective of musicians organized around the late Anton Fier, the Cleveland-raised drummer and producer whose interests ranged from experimental pop and funk to out jazz and New York’s downtown scene. The group’s 1985 album, Visions of Excess, featured an all-star cast that included Michael Stipe, Richard Thompson, Bill Laswell, and John Lydon. Fier would also work with Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Laurie Anderson, Jeff Buckley, John Zorn, and many others.

Lydon, the former Sex Pistols singer, performed “The Animal Speaks” on the album. Jack Bruce of Cream sang an alternate version released as a twelve-inch single.

Fier knew Kidney through the Northeast Ohio scene. Fier had played with Pere Ubu and came to see the Numbers Band, often accompanied by the bassist Tony Maimone, who later played with Kidney as well. Fier was looking for songs and performers to bring into the Golden Palominos’ circle.

By the time “The Animal Speaks” appeared on Visions of Excess, however, the Numbers Band had largely stopped playing it at home.

“Nobody in our audience was interested in it,” Kidney said. “It was alienating to them.”

The Song Enters the Movies

The next turn in the afterlife of “The Animal Speaks” came through film.

The Numbers Band’s recording appeared in My Friend Dahmer, the 2017 independent feature written and directed by Marc Meyers and adapted from Derf Backderf’s graphic novel.

Butler’s relationship to the project was unusually direct. In 2005, he bought Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood home in Bath Township. A Spice Girls cover of his song “Christmas Wrapping” had helped provide the down payment on his first house. Only after he had fallen in love with the property did the real-estate agent make a disclosure.

“We need to tell you something,” the agent said. “This is the Dahmer house.”

Butler was flabbergasted.

“I’m not a ghoul,” he said.

He was, however, a collector of 1940s and ’50s furniture, and the house—a striking example of mid-century modern architecture set in the woods of Summit County—appealed to him on its own terms.

“I had to buy it,” he said.

Butler and his girlfriend set out to make the house what he calls a creative and joyful place. Years later, the scenes set in the Dahmer family home were filmed inside the actual house, with its rooms returned to an approximation of their 1970s appearance.

During preproduction, Butler encouraged director Marc Meyers to draw on the music of Northeast Ohio, an idea that fit with Meyers’s effort to ground the film in the culture of the period. The two met at a local bar and talked about the region’s musical history.

“The Animal Speaks would never have been in the movie except Chris Butler, who brought the filmmaker to hear the band live,” Kidney says. “He was knocked out, and Chris encouraged him to put the song in the film.”

Meyers remembers the search for music as part of a broader effort to immerse himself in the Akron of the period.

“I went to the Dahmer house and met Chris, who was about to move from Jersey City, I think, to Akron and rent the actual childhood home,” Meyers says. “During preproduction I met Chris in a bar. I was educating myself on the history of that moment.”

That research extended to the music developing in the region while Dahmer was living there.

“I wanted to use the sounds of local radio and the culture because music is definitely a character in the film—the music Dahmer was listening to,” Meyers says. “I found music to use on the car stereo, and that led me to other Akron punk songs to fill out the needle drops. That music grounded the film in place and time.”

There was a regional irony to it all. Many listeners encountered the song not through an interest in Northeast Ohio music but through one of the area’s most notorious histories. Jeffrey Dahmer, a graduate of Revere High School, committed his first murder in his Bath Township house in 1978 and later admitted to killing seventeen people before being arrested. His heinous crimes cast a lasting shadow over the region. The film, however, also returned part of Kidney’s musical history to public attention.

Film and television placements are one of the principal ways old music reaches young listeners. The process is called rediscovery, though the word implies a shared memory. However, most young listeners are not rediscovering these songs. They are hearing them for the first time.

Recently, my twenty-five-year-old son, a musician and visual artist living in Brooklyn, heard “The Animal Speaks” at a club on the Lower East Side. Since then, he has heard it in rotation at several other places, including Sophie’s, where younger patrons have encountered it without knowing its Ohio history or that it is 50 years old. (I had played the song for him years earlier as an example of some of the best music Ohio ever produced. He called to tell me the song had found him again.)

What Survives

A record turns fifty. It is reissued, reconsidered, and celebrated.

“The Animal Speaks” resists that arrangement.

Its history is not a neat progression from neglect to recognition. The Numbers Band was never entirely obscure, at least not locally. The band worked steadily and maintained a devoted audience. And Anton Fier could hear that it could be a John Lydon performance. Or a Jack Bruce performance. And the filmmakers behind My Friend Dahmer heard the original recording could unsettle viewers who knew nothing about the Numbers Band. Younger listeners, like my son, hear something that requires neither regional loyalty nor nostalgia.

This is a story of a song that travels well. A musician hears the song. A new singer inhabits it. Then another. A filmmaker places it against images. A stranger in a bar asks what is that that is playing. And along the way, the song acquires new associations around the very thing that makes it notable.

“The Animal Speaks” began as the sound of a band playing to a live room, ready to dance.

Fifty years later, the room keeps getting bigger.

The post The Long and Continuing Afterlife of “The Animal Speaks” by The Numbers Band appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Foo Fighters really aren’t standing behind its new album.

None of the more than two dozen songs the sextet played Monday night at Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland came from April’s“Your Favorite Toy.” Instead, the Dave Grohl-led group delivered a greatest hits set, with a smattering of fan favorites and deep cuts sprinkled in.

With a three-hour show to tinker with, the band had ample opportunity to give the tens of thousands in attendance a chance to see what it was up to as it broke in new drummer Ilan Rubin and Grohl navigated the fallout of his fathering a child out of wedlock. Instead, the Foos chose to play it safe.

That’s not to dismiss the rest of the show, which saw the band entertaining the biggest crowd it’s ever played to in Cleveland with its brand of mainstream hard rock (the band last played in the city at a 2021 show at the House of Blues ahead of its induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, though that was an intimate one-off). Grohl’s a born showman, and it was clear he was working hard from the start — he was drenched in sweat by the second song. Hopefully the Warren-born singer/guitarist/drummer put in extra effort because of the proximity to his hometown.

“We’ve got 31 years of songs to play tonight for one show,” Grohl said early on. “That’s a lot of songs. So we gotta pick something for everyone.”

Well, almost everyone.

Fortunately, there are plenty of good songs from the past. Opener “All My Life” set the tone, with Grohl screaming half the lyrics (he must have a great vocal coach if he’s able to sing-scream that much every couple of days) and the band stretching out on instrumental sections.

Not everything worked, often because the screaming got in the way of good melodies. There were numerous highlights, though, including takes on “This Is a Call” and “Big Me” from its 1995 self-titled debut, a ferocious “No Son of Mine” with a snippet of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” and show closer “Everlong,” complete with fireworks during the last chorus. There were also short but entertaining takes on tunes from the bands each member was in before the Foos.

Grohl’s references to Northeast Ohio were also moving, especially when he said he visited the cemetery where his grandparents are buried for the first time in 26 years.

It was only in the encore, when the band played “The Teacher” in honor of Grohl’s late mother, that Foo Fighters took anything remotely resembling a chance. The moody, atmospheric song unfolded over more than 10 minutes, giving the band a chance to lock in and crescendo to a moving finale.

With three hours to play with, the band could’ve trimmed some fat by taking out a “OK, sing along with me” here and a drum solo there to make room for some new songs.

But hey, I guess the hits always sound good in a football stadium.

If the Foos played it safe, openers Queens of the Stone Age did anything but during its 55-minute, 11-song opening set. Taking the stage to Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight,” the Josh Homme-led quintet tore through its version of hard rock, complete with herky-jerky rhythms and overdriven psychedelic guitar solos.

The climax was a three-song suite from the band’s best-known album, 2002’s “Songs for the Deaf,” which featured Grohl drumming on most of the tracks. Drummer Jon Theodore ably recreated Grohl’s parts and then some, receiving ample time to shine on a punishing run-through of “A Song for the Deaf.”

First openers Mannequin Pussy also made the most of its 30 minutes. The band, which last played the area in 2024 at the 400-capacity Grog Shop, according to setlist.fm, did its best to translate its sound for a massive stage. Lead singer Marisa Dabice made the most of the space by dancing and traversing the catwalk.

While some of the ’90s alternative rock-inspired music was uneven, the group was at its best when rapidly veering from one punk song to another.

(Photos below by Brian Lumley)

Setlist:
1. All My Life
2. The Pretender
3. Times Like These
4. Rope
5. Stacked Actors
6. My Hero
7. Learn to Fly
8. These Days
9. Walk
10. This Is a Call
11. No Son of Mine (with a snippet of Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades”)
12. Wheels
13. Marigold
14. Big Me
15. Under You
16. La Dee Da
17. Run
18. Band Introductions, with snippets of No Use for a Name’s “Invincible,” Sunny Day Real Estate’s “Seven,” The Wallflowers’ “One Headlight,” Germs’ “Manimal” and The New Regime’s “Tap Dancing in a Minefield”
19. Monkey Wrench
20. Breakout
21. The Sky Is a Neighborhood
22. Aurora
23. Best of You
Encore:
24. The Teacher
25. Everlong

Eric Heisig is a freelance writer in Cleveland. He can be reached at eheisig@gmail.com.

Subscribe to Cleveland Scene newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post Foo Fighters Eschew New Songs for Hits-Laden Huntington Bank Field Show appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Taking inspiration from the Netflix series Bridgerton, The Cleveland Museum of Art’s long running Mix at CMA series continued with Mix: Summer Soiree.

The evening featured dance lessons from Viva Dance Studio as well as music from Opus 216 and DJ Sobe.

The post Photos: CMA Hosted a Bridgerton-Inspired MIX at CMA with Summer Soiree appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

The Agora hosted another sold-out show Tuesday night as the hyphenate rapper-singer-songwriter-performance artist Qveen Herby brought her stylings to Cleveland.

Born in Seward, Nebraska in 1986, the performer also known as Amy Renee Heidemann adopted her nom de guerre after a stint in a pop duet.  Her unique stylings developed soon after the dissolution of Karmin, the duo that she had formed with her musical partner and now-husband.

She’s on tour to promote her second solo album, Isle of Qveen.

Opening act Thot Squad put on a half-hour attention-getting set prior to the Qveen taking the stage. Here’s all the action we caught:

The post Concert Photos: Qveen Herby Brings Iconic Style to the Agora appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Styx and Chicago brought their co-headlining tour to Blossom Music Center last night. Both bands are touring behemoths: Chicago has never missed a year of touring in their 59-year history and Styx has played more than 1,000 shows in the last ten years.  Here’s all the action we caught.

The post Concert Photos: Styx and Chicago Deliver Decades of Hits at Blossom appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

THU 08/06

Sam Barber

The singer-songwriter performs at 6 p.m. at Jacobs Pavilion. Waylon Wyatt and Wild Horses open. The tour supports Barber’s new album, Broken View, which shows off his husky voice. Opening tune “Borrowed Tune” has a Bob Seger feel to it and will likely figure into tonight’s set.

2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.

FRI 08/07

Riley Green: Cowboy as It Gets Tour 2026

The country music superstar and former college football quarterback became a sensation upon the release of his debut album, 2019’s Different ‘Round Here. On tour in support of his new album, That’s Just Me, he performs tonight at 7 at Blossom.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

MON 08/10

Foo Fighters

The rock group led by dynamic singer-guitarist Dave Grohl brings its stadium tour to Huntington Bank Field. Grohl famously formed Foo Fighters after his former band Nirvana dissolved in the wake of singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994. Foo Fighters had success right out of the gate with their self-titled debut and with 1997’s The Colour and the Shape. The show starts at 5:30 p.m., and Queens of the Stone Age and Mannequin Pussy open.

100 Alfred Lerner Way, 440-891-5000, huntingtonbankfield.com.

TUE 08/11

Five Finger Death Punch

Twenty years into its career, this hard rock group has become an arena and amphitheater staple. Earlier this year, the group released the single “Eye of the Storm,” another radio friendly hard rock tune with gruff vocals and dramatic, almost tribal drums. The show begins at 6:45 p.m., and Cody Jinks and Eva Under Fire open.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

Rod Stewart: One Last Time

The mod rocker brings his farewell tour to Rocket Arena. The show begins at 7:30 p.m., and singer-songwriter Richard Marx opens. At 81, Stewart has a huge catalog of hits and has been inducted into the Rock Hall for his work with both the Faces and as a solo artist.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketarena.com.

THU 08/13

Simple Plan

The Montreal-based pop-punk band led by singer Pierre Bouvier performs at 6 p.m. at Jacobs Pavilion. Last year’s documentary film, Simple Plan: The Kids in the Crowd, chronicles the group’s remarkable rise to fame in the late ’90s. #OH!3 and Bowling for Soup open.

2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.

FRI 08/14

The Kehlani World Tour: North America

The R&B singer-songwriter that got their start with the teen pop group PopLyfe comes to Blossom. The tour supports the new self-titled effort that features the hit single “Folded,” a slow jam with soaring strings. The show begins at 7 p.m. Durand Bernarr, Isaia Huron, Thearti$t and Waseel open.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

SAT 08/15

J. Cole: The Fall-Off World Tour

The singer-songwriter and rapper brings his tour in support of his latest album, The Fall-Off, to Rocket Arena. The ambitious 24-track album chronicles Cole’s return visits to his North Carolina home. The show starts at 8 p.m.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketarena.com.

TUE 08/18

Lindsey Stirling — Duality Untamed Tour

The violinist, dancer and songwriter that mixes classical with rock, pop and electronica performs at 7 p.m. at Blossom. The tour supports 2024’s Duality, an album that yielded pop singles such as “Eye of the Untold Her,” “Inner Gold,” “Evil Twin” and “Survive.”

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

FRI 08/21

Empire of the Sun — Ask That God: Afterlife North American Tour

The rock band brings its theatrical new tour to Blossom. The group’s 2024 album, Ask That God. The album features dreamy pop tunes such as “Changes” and the ’80s-inspired synth-pop number “The Feeling You Get.” The show starts at 7 p.m.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

SAT 08/22

Ella Mai

The soulful English singer-songwriter who released her third studio album, Do You Still Love Me?, earlier this year performs at 7 p.m. at Jacobs Pavilion. Many of the songs reference her experiences as a new mother. Ama and Girlfriend open.

2014 Sycamore St., 216-861-4080, jacobspavilion.com.

MON 08/24

The Return of the Carnival of the Sins: Motley Crue

The metal group that played a premature farewell tour a few years back performs at 6:30 p.m. at Blossom. The group announced this summer tour that marks its 45th anniversary with much fanfare as it performed at the American Idol finale back in May. Tesla and Extreme open.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

THU 08/27

Rüfüs Du Sol

The Grammy-winning live electronic trio formed in Sydney Australia has released five studio albums to date. Their most recent effort, Inhale/Exhale, performs at 7:30 p.m. at Blossom. The album features poppy tunes such as “Inhale” and “Music Is Better.” Ben Bohmer opens.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

FRI 08/28

Josh Groban: Stage, Screen and Symphony

The pop singer whose first four albums went multi-platinum performs at 7 p.m. at Blossom. Earlier this year, Groban released Cinematic, his rendition of soundtrack classics such as “As Time Goes By” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” the latter of which pairs him with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

1145 W. Steels Corners Rd., Cuyahoga Falls, 216-231-1111, livenation.com.

SAT 08/29

Don Toliver

The Houston-based rapper and singer brings his Nitrous Octane World Tour to Rocket Arena. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and the current tour supports his latest album, Octane, an ambitious 18-song release that finds him expanding beyond the trap style of rap for which he’s known.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketarena.com.

The post The Best Concerts to Catch in Cleveland in August appeared first on Cleveland Scene.

Before singer-songwriter Koe Wetzel’s new album, The Night Champion, was even released, the party hearty country star had logged some serious miles traveling to play shows in support of the release.

“We got to Chicago yesterday, and we do a pop-up show at Carol’s and then we fly to San Diego,” says Wetzel via phone. He performs on Thursday, Aug. 27 at the Wolstein Center. “We left the bus at the house for this trip.”

He also went to the Land Down Under earlier this year and found that Aussies appreciate his rowdy shows just as much as Americans do.

“Australia was kind of the kick-off to the Night Champion Tour,” he says. “Australia was crazy. I don’t know what it is about it, but in the last three or four years, in my eyes, the genre has grown. Dude, they are so fuckin’ great. They are so cool and love the music. They are true fans. It makes me feel like I’m back in the day and having crazy fans come out in smaller rooms. It was a damn blast.”

Wetzel says that The Night Champion was like an unplanned pregnancy. He didn’t intend on making an album, but a few whimsical studio sessions gave birth to it, and he couldn’t be prouder of the results.

“We were just trying to follow up what [the 2024 single] ‘High Road’ did for us,” he says. ‘I wanted to give something back to radio, so we wrote a few songs, and it turned into what The Night Champion is. It came organically. We had a lot of the same writers with me. I wasn’t planning it. It just happened. It’s been cool to see from where it started to where it ended up. We’ve been sitting on it for a about a year now, dude.”

For the first time ever, Wetzel, a Texas native, recorded an entire album in Nashville.

“It was a great process,” he says. “[Producer] Gabe Simon (Noah Kahan) set everything up, and he is phenomenal.”

The first single, “Hurts Like You,” finds Wetzel contemplating a toxic relationship and getting more introspective than he has in the past. “I can take the pain if it hurts like you,” he sings on the tune that features a catchy refrain and shows off his pop sensibilities.

“It’s [about a relationship that’s] like a drug you can’t get away from,” he explains. “You know it’s bad, and it’s going to hurt you. There’s something about it that brings you back. That was the idea going into it. You can tell that that song stands out on its own. We didn’t write for a radio hit; that’s just what we came up with.”

Wetzel exploits his red dirt background on the grunge-y “Time Goes on,” a tune that evokes Soundgarden and Nirvana with its heavy guitars. Wetzel doesn’t hide his affinity for those Seattle-based bands.

“I grew up on Nirvana and pop-punk music,” he explains. “With the last couple of records I’ve done, I’ve slowed it down a little bit. The records weren’t as heavy. I tapped into the emotional side to comprehend all these feelings. I wanted to put a little spark on it, so we grunged it up as best we could, and I think it turned out pretty good.”

For Wetzel, who first performed when he was 6, the album represents the culmination of a lifetime of listening to all kinds of music.

“Each record is a chapter in my life, and this record ropes everything in and closes the book,” he says. “It looks back on everything, and I think I will look back on it in 10, 20 or 30 years and still think highly of it.”

He half-jokingly thinks his embrace of so many different musical genres has to do with a learning disability.

“I think I have ADHD but was never tested for it, and I can’t stay on one thing too long,” he says. “My mom would play honky-tonk country stuff and put me on ’90s country music. My dad loved hip-hop and rock and in high school, I found out about grunge and then alternative rock. I love so many styles and that has pointed me to where I am today. I never sat down and said I wanted to play this kind of music.”

Wetzel broke out when his 2016 debut album, Noise Complaint, became an underground hit.

“That album was just the right place at the right time,” says Wetzel. “In the Texas country scene, there was stuff being done the same way. It was a brash record for Texas. It stood out because it was so honest. It hit the college students in the teeth when they needed it the most. It connected with the younger generation and was a timing deal. It wasn’t anything we did.’

Wetzel signed to Columbia and then released an album called Sellout to show that he hadn’t, in fact, sold out.

“I got everybody’s blessing before I went in there and bashed on everyone,” he says. “It was part of the deal. Coming from the Texas country scene, those fans are so loyal. It was me reassuring them that the music would not change. I told those guys at Columbia what I was thinking. They said, ‘We’re looking for some shock value.’ I said, ‘I got it for you, baby.’”

At the time of this interview, Wetzel had just finished rehearsals for the tour and says he was one of the first Texas country acts to use pyro.

“We have a bunch of fire for this tour too,” he says. “it’s a rock ’n’ roll show. The songs from the record will sound re-imagined. It’s super-loud and energetic. It’s a good time.”

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

The post Koe Wetzel Reflects on His Humble Roots with New Album appeared first on Cleveland Scene.